What does it feel like to be a software engineer in a fast-growing company? What are the key lessons you’ll need to learn? 

It’s a sunny Thursday morning in May. Rob Heaton has travelled from his home in London to the UL campus. Rob, a software engineer with Stripe has been working closely with the ISE team for the past week on course content for the first cohort of students arriving in September.

On one of Rob’s seldom-taken downtime moments ISE Co-Director, Stephen Kinsella takes a 10-minute opportunity to learn more about him, discussing Rob’s career in software engineering, the work he does at Stripe, and his thoughts on what will make ISE unique.

Rob has helped ISE think through how we interact with companies and how we make what students learn as applicable as possible, and his insights in this interview are fascinating. He is a security engineer with Stripe, he was a junior international chess player, and he used to live in San Francisco. Now he lives and works in London.

Who is Rob Heaton?

“I do weekly office hours with anyone who signs up. They are most useful for ‘Advanced Beginners’ who are working towards getting their first job as a programmer. I write semi-guided programming project outlines to help beginners build their own systems while getting some – but not too much – support. My aim is to help people and make the leap from cobbling programs together to writing elegant, thoughtful code. Have a look at my website to learn a bit more.”